McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) — Fentanyl is the deadliest drug ever to hit U.S. streets and crosses the border from Mexico with little resistance, drug officials say.

“Mexico needs to be pushed or cajoled or something,” author Sam Quinones said Thursday during a Council on Foreign Relations webinar on opioid drugs. “Some push to get Mexico to do a whole lot more than they are doing to stop fentanyl from coming North.”

Fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin and can be made with very few precursor chemicals, which are easily obtained because they are largely unrestricted for agriculture, industrial and pharmaceutical use, said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

“This is the most lethal epidemic ever in human history affecting wide segments of populations,” she said. “This epidemic is driven by supply.”

In 2022, there were 108,000 drug overdose deaths in the United States, including 71,000 fentanyl-related deaths, according to the CDC. But the actual number of overdoses incurred from opioid drugs, like fentanyl, exceeded 500,000.

Felbab-Brown said medications like Narcan, which reverse the effects of an overdose from opioids, have helped to reduce the death rates, but she said it is still startling and rising each month.

“There is no such thing as a long-term fentanyl user. They all die,” said Quinones, who is known for his reporting in Mexico and on Mexicans in the United States, and for his chronicling of the opioid crisis in America.

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, held a news conference with fellow GOP lawmakers on Thursday in Washington, D.C., accusing the Biden administration of not doing enough to stem the flow of deadly fentanyl across the Southwest border.

“What’s it going to take to get the attention of the Biden administration to finally do something about the Biden border crisis?” Cornyn said. “How about 108,000 dead Americans – dead because they consumed some of the drugs that are smuggled across the southwestern border, including 71,000 from fentanyl.”

Their criticism came a day after the Republican-led House Homeland Security Committee held a lengthy hearing on an investigation into what they call Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ “loss of operational control to cartels.”

“Mayorkas (has) empowered the drug cartels in Mexico to seize operational control of the Southwest border and smuggle illegal aliens, criminals, suspected terrorists, and deadly fentanyl into the United States,” Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green, a Republican from Tennessee, said.

Mexican drug cartels “are running wild under Secretary Mayorkas’ policies. One thing is clear, the cartels have seized control of our own border,” Green said. “Every dollar the cartels rake in comes at the cost of an American life or livelihood.”